Previews

LittleBigPlanet

Sony's CES demonstration of LittleBigPlanet hit the highlights of this unusually social game.

Spiffy:

Simple, social gameplay; easy to create and share content.

Iffy:

Creating truly memorable levels may be time-consuming.

Sony is putting a great deal of emphasis on the PS3 title LittleBigPlanet, granting the development team a whole block of time in Sony's theatre during the Consumer Electronics Expo. People packed the space to see what was up. Why all the hubbub about this simple little platformer? LittleBigPlanet is a sign of things to come. It demonstrates that gaming can be both social and creative... Of course, the fact that it's irresistibly cute for gamers and non-gamers alike is a big plus.

The mantra of LittleBigPlanet is "Play, Create, Share," and the development team showed off all three facets of the game at CES. To show off the gameplay, Producer Kyle Shubel and three friends blasted through a level with an Indian background and theme music. As discussed in our earlier previews, gameplay is quick and simple. Moving platforms require quick feet to traverse, and the integrated physics mean you often have to team up with friends to tip one end of a scale, move heavy objects, or manipulate your environment to move to the next area.

New in this demo was a death mechanic -- it was now possible for your little avatar to get him or herself bopped off of the screen by either getting crushed by something heavy or burned by flaming obstacles. Death is no big deal: you can simply pop out of a respawn point next to a friend, possibly skipping over a chunk of the level. Presumably players can set goals for each map to reward players for completing an area without dying.

This might be tough to do if your friends are feeling mischievous, as the developers have also added "slapping" since we last saw the game. Tapping a button will brutally backhand your buddy, hurtling him or her across the map (and potentially into the clamping jaws of an obstacle). Slapping is accompanied by suitably ridiculous sound effects and even the dev team couldn't help from busting out into goofy four-way slap-fights while they were supposed to be giving the demo.

Expressing Yourself

After Shubel and company completed the level, he took a few moments to show off just how expressive your avatar could be. You could change your little sack-man's mood by pressing the d-pad -- tapping up once made your little man happy, and a little smile would break out on his face. Continue to press up and your sack-man would grow increasingly happy, until his whole face was filled with a giant open-mouthed grin, tongue hanging out and wagging. Other directions on the D-Pad made your little character angry, sad, or scared. The extremes of any emotion were absolutely ridiculous and comical to see.